The Life and Times of El

Busy days; having recovered from some sort of flu bug and having finally got past a fortnight that included a stolen laptop, my mother's aunt dying and an oven door that decided it wanted to become stuck halfway open, I find myself trying to start and finish a lit review and begin the process of cutting my rock samples and battling winter. I am knee-deep in articles right now and trying to convince myself that Fimbulwinter is not upon us quite just yet even though we only reached 11 degrees today (that's 11 degrees celsius, and northern hemisphereans, feel free to laugh at my quaint ideas about cold. I do the same when there's mass panic about a 35-degree heatwave.)

I have also finished my genderflipped Silmarillion casting that I started with minviendha  however many weeks ago, covering the House of Finwe and the main Sindar players. And that will be all. Slightly incestuous with my regular Silm ladies casting which I will make one day, but it can't be helped.

So I realised that I had a few ficlets on various computers and USBs that I never actually posted here, and you'll be seeing them this week. Without further ado:


Geology Rocks - Merlin season 1, no spoilers - In which the Merlin crew are going on a field trip. agenttrojie  mentioned the idea and I ran with it.


It's bloody typical, Arthur thinks, that it would rain all day every day on the one field trip he forgot to pack his raincoat. He's remembered why all the professors speak about rain as a geologist's worst enemy: everything is slippery, he can't see a damn thing, the outcrop is getting soaked as fast as he can hammer away at it and the expensive waterproof notebooks are living up to their claims, except that he can't write on them in pencil when they're wet and the ink from his pen is running all over the page. He's soaked to the skin, again. He'll have moss growing on him by the time they go home at this rate.

Even more unfair is that he's the only one getting soaked. His father and Morgana are looking at an anticline hinge on the other side of the hill and no raindrop would dare fall on them in case Uther vaporised it with his eyes. Gwen is ridiculously sensible so of course she's prepared, although from the way she's going on about acclaps in the succession she probably wouldn't notice if it started snowing. Lance is tagging along with her although if he's interested in structural he should be up with Uther and Morgana, and the bastard has some secret way of keeping his notes perfectly dry. Bloody scholarship students. And Gaius doesn't even seem to notice the rain because he's looking at the succession with a dreamy expression, although knowing Gaius he's equally likely to be wondering what's for dinner.

So that leaves Arthur getting soggier and soggier and not having anyone to yell at about it, when Merlin reappears around the curve of the outcrop. 'Bit wet, isn't it?' he says cheerfully, and then 'God, you look like a drowned rat.'

'I've noticed,' Arthur growls.

'I've found some forams in the mudstone up above the volc stuff,' says Merlin in the tone of someone revealing an amazing secret. Arthur's tempted, but this is normally the point when Uther looms over his shoulder and manages to convey through body language alone that only hopeless reprobates study fossils, no matter what Jurassic Park told him when he was eight. Then Merlin says the magic words.

'They're under an overhang.'

Arthur turns around and checks very carefully for Uther being behind him, but his father is still on the other side of the hill. 'Lead the way,' he says, and Merlin grins.